Paul Miller, a technology writer for The Verge, performed a curious experiment over the last year: He quit the Internet. Miller replaced his smartphone with a feature phone. He got his news through TV and newspapers. He embarked on what he thought would be a liberating journey to find himself and a life not dominated by the immediacy of information and communication.

What he ultimately found was himself. Warts and all.

Noble But Naïve

Miller's experiment, while noble, reeks of naïveté. People like to think they can change the way they are by changing their circumstances. Oftentimes somebody will move to a new city and say, “I am going to be a whole different person now.” It rarely works that way. Real behavioral, emotional and characteristic change is not something that happens overnight.

At first, Miller’s experiment started well. He biked more, got outside and found that his attention span was longer. Life without the Internet, he found, was oddly liberating. 

For a little while, at least. 

Miller writes:

A year in, I don't ride my bike so much. My frisbee gathers dust. Most weeks I don't go out with people even once. My favorite place is the couch. I prop my feet up on the coffee table, play a video game, and listen to an audiobook. I pick a mindless game, like Borderlands 2 or Skate 3, and absently thumb the sticks through the game-world while my mind rests on the audiobook, or maybe just on nothing.

The Law Of Unintended Reality

It is undoubtedly true that the Internet is changing the intricacies of human behavior. This effect is especially pronounced among younger individuals who have known only a life with the Internet ever-available just a swipe or keystroke away.

Yet, ultimately, Internet or no, Miller’s own behavioral traits asserted themselves.

When I first read of Miller’s yearlong trial, my first thought was to applaud. I respected the project for its experimental and journalistic merits. I have seen other young people that have become disillusioned with the Internet and the life they lead on it and attempted to escape. Former ReadWrite author Jon Mitchell might describe himself that way. 

But as I thought about it a little more, Miller’s decision to leave the Internet struck me as, to be honest, kind of dumb. I wish there was a nicer word for it. But, instead of trying to cope with his perceived personal deficiencies, he fled from them.  It seems Miller had decided that his sense of self and worth was defined by the Web, so he tried to change things overnight. In the end, he just changed his location.

Miller admits to going through the modern psycho-sociological phenomenon known as a “quarter-life crisis.” This period of a person’s life, usually occurring between the ages of 24 to 26, is defined by a lack of definition. The behaviors, world concepts and sense of self built up since the teenage years come in doubt. These 20-somethings face the task of figuring out, yet again, who they really are. Sometimes they key on the notion that what had defined them before is the source of their problems and the best way to fix things is to completely disassociate with their previous life. For Miller, that definition of self stemmed from the Internet. He has lived on the Web since he was 12, earning his livelihood on it since he was 14. 

I totally get what was going on. My own story is not so different from Miller’s. I started cooking professionally when I was 14. By the time I was in my early 20s, I was a trained chef. By 25, I would’ve given anything to get out of the kitchen and be a different person. Though my experience was not tied to the Web, the framework was similar. While I was able to successfully change careers (to the Web, ironically), I did not change the type of human being I was. Only time did that.

The Unexamined Life

There is a reason that our series on stepping back from from the Internet life is called ReadWrite Pause and not ReadWrite Quit or ReadWrite Disconnect. We realize it is healthy to step away, read a book, write something by hand or just Digital Detox for a couple of days. But we also know the difference between taking a break and giving up.

The Internet is what we make of it. Luckily, I have never had a problem turning off the computer to read a long book or go on a long bike ride. I have learned to compartmentalize my digital self from my physical self. The Internet does not define me. It is a part of what I do and what makes me… me. But it is not the core of my existence. 

Miller, in the end, came to a similar conclusion:

But then I spoke with Nathan Jurgenson, a ‘net theorist’ who helped organize the conference [on Theorizing the Web]. He pointed out that there's a lot of "reality" in the virtual, and a lot of "virtual" in our reality. When we use a phone or a computer we're still flesh-and-blood humans, occupying time and space.

Maybe it's just me, but that seems kind of obvious.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

I get email. A lot of email. Between my teaching and contract work, notifications from social media services, messages from friends and family, and all of the pitches I get from public relations and marketing people from around the planet, I average 5,500 incoming emails per month: which is something like 183 per day. 

My goal, to clear out every one of those emails from my Inbox. That's right, Inbox Zero: an empty-and-stays-empty folder of incoming email.

Some 95% of my email is handled with Gmail. I know I have expressed concerns about Google's commitment to its free services, but the fact is that I have not found another universal, multi-platform email service that gives me all the features and level of access I need on my phone, tablet and computers. The addition of two-factor authorization pretty much sealed the deal for me.

Like many people, I have multiple email accounts. I have a ReadWrite address, a school address, my old Linux.com email, the user ID address from my Internet provider, my personal Google Apps account and my very first Gmail account, which I use to access the various new services that Google for some reason doesn't let Google Apps users access.

All of those accounts are shunted into one Gmail interface, which makes things pretty simple. I can reply from any one of these accounts, archive into helpful folders and (my favorite) use canned responses to politely inform PR people that no, I am not interested in following up on their pitch at this time. (This is important, as I learned from former ReadWrite colleague Jon Mitchell, because if you don't answer, they'll keep pinging you, thus increasing your inbox traffic.)

For a long time I've had every intention of keeping my Inbox clear as possible, and have gone on massive delete and archive sprees to cull my Inbox down to 50 or so messages that must be dealt with. But then, invariably, things get away from me, and suddenly I have hundreds of emails - read and unread - sitting in my Inbox, demanding attention. Then, when they don't get any, I'm forced to stare at their mocking reminders of my failures as a productive member of society.

The Inbox Zero Theory

About a month ago, though, I stumbled on Kevin Rarick's Inbox Zero for Life approach. It didn't seem like that much extra work, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

It should be noted that Rarick did not coin the term Inbox Zero - that honor apparently goes to Merlin Mann, creator of the 43 Folders productivity blog. In 2007, Mann gave an hour-long video presentation on Inbox Zero for a Google TechTalk.

Mann's basic idea is to go into your email system fewer times per day and once in there, to touch each message as few times as possible. Kill it, answer it right away or shunt it into a to-do system where it's filed as a task. What Rarick added is a nuts-and-bolts guide to applying these ideas to Gmail.

The overlap between Mann's concepts and the Getting Things Done productivity system that I already like to use - plus the fact that Rarick has fashioned this system focused on Gmail - made it very attractive to me. So off I went.

The Inbox Zero Plan

The first thing that you should know is that you don't have to use Gmail. Any mail client will do, but it helps to be as familiar with it as possible. The less time you spend futzing around with menus and mouse gestures, the sooner you can clean out your Inbox.

For Gmail, Rarick recommends turning on keyboard shortcuts for the user interface, which I initially thought was nuts. Not that I have a problem with keyboard shortcuts; I cut my teeth on emacs, so the keyboard is my friend. But using shortcuts on a Web-based service? Weird. But it's actually a good idea, and if your email client has similar tools, use them.

Another thing to try before you start the process: implement weapons of mass deletion. You can easily search for all email older than a certain date and archive it, but there could leave a lot of cruft taking up space in your Inbox file. Better to go in and kill it.

Some friends recommended using the free beta service Mailstrom.co. Once you grant it access, Mailstrom will process your Inbox by sender, date, subject… nearly any way you can think of. Even though it took a week for my turn on Mailstrom's waiting list to come up, it was well worth it.

Using Mailstrom's nicely laid out interface, I quickly highlighted messages from shopping or social media sites. With two clicks, I highlighted them all and archived or deleted them as needed. It was, frankly, beautiful. (The only issue is with Mailstrom is that once you move to Inbox Zero, you almost don't need it anymore. At that point, Mailstrom's daily reminder messages become a thing of irony, indeed.)

Once I finished the mass culling, I followed Rarick's system to mute messages (press m), read and archive (press e), answer or take action in less than 30 seconds and archive (e) or star and archive (se) any messages that need more than half a minute's work. 

Actually, I varied that a bit. Rarick suggests turning off the Priority Inbox in Gmail (which I recommend) and using the Starred list as a functional to-do list. Since I already use Omnifocus as a task manager, I decided to change this up a bit. Instead of starring and archiving, I press (option-l) to select the URL of the Gmail message, then open the New Action dialog in Omnifocus to start a new task and drop the URL for the message in the task's Notes field. It's a little extra work, but it keeps my tasks in Omnifocus and still gets my Inbox clear.

You could also use programs like Evernote or Remember the Milk in the same way.

Otherwise, I followed Rarick's system as recommended.

The Inbox Zero Results

After a solid month of using this system, I have to say I was impressed. I almost achieve Inbox Zero on a daily basis. Typically, there's five or six messages sitting there at the end of each day that I would rather not make a task for - I'll get to them in the morning.

The process did not take a huge amount of discipline, which was nice, and I did find that I was compelled to check my Inbox less and less, because I knew there wouldn't be 100+ messages waiting to haunt me. That was even better, because it noticably lowered my stress levels. 

There were some bumps. Occasionally I got a little overzealous with the (e) key and archived something on which I should have taken action. Eventually I learned to slow down a bit, and those hiccups soon faded.

Traveling - or any disruption in my routine - seemed to throw me off a bit. Every time my daily schedule was interrupted, my Inbox would fill up and it would me a little more time to clear it out.

Overall, I am very happy I achieved Inbox Zero, and it still seems to be working. I am even content with the occasional Inbox Five or Inbox Six, which are both a lot better than Inbox 10,534.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

This post was originally published on our SAY Media sister site, Remodelista. We're republishing it with permission.

Did you participate in the National Day of Unplugging last month? Designed to "help hyper-connected people embrace the ancient ritual of a day of rest, the Sabbath Manifesto aims to slow down lives in an increasingly hectic world." Those of us navigating the uncharted terrain of Parenthood 2.0 know the challenges, especially when it comes to technology.

At what age is social media appropriate? How much screen time is too much? Research only goes so far to supply the answers: you can find one study that says “video games make kids violent” and on the next click, another study claiming, “video games make kids more creative!”

As a general rule, I tend to fall back on what my grandmother always said: Moderation is key. Here are 10 tips for keeping tech in check with your family:

1. Talk to your kids about technology. In my interview with Dr. Larry Rosen, a psychologist and author of iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession With Technology and Overcoming Its Hold On Us, he recommended setting clear limits for technology, particularly at dinnertime - absolutely no technology (adults or children) at the table. He also recommends weekly family meetings starting with kids as young as age three. Sit on the floor with your kids, at their eye level. Ask them questions about technology: what is your favorite game? Ask them about online teasing. “Parents have to be absolutely non-judgmental in their responses,” Rosen says, “the goal is to develop family trust so that as kids grow older, and things like cyber bullying do come up, kids feel comfortable sharing.”

2. Set specific windows of time when technology is allowed at home. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity recommend keeping children under the age of two as screen-free as possible, and limiting screen time for older children. Too much screen time has been linked to poor sleep, a shorter attention span, and decreased physical activity. Personally, I allow my kids (ages four and five) to watch TV on certain days when they are exhausted (or I am!) for one hour, and I set stricter limits on interactive technology, like video games and apps, which are allowed only on airplanes.

3. Make your kids earn their time online. Change the passwords for your Wi-Fi (and your devices) regularly. Make a list of chores (make your bed, do your homework, brush your teeth, tell your mother how fabulous she is!) that kids must complete before they can receive the password. One family I know uses a tally system: Kids can earn tallies for good grades, homework, behavior, at-home responsibilities, etc. And five tallies will earn them 30 minutes of an app or or an age-appropriate game.

4. Set tech free zones (or times) in the house. For example, no gadgets allowed in the dining room. Or, no technology after 7pm. (This is good for adults too. And great for sleep hygiene.) As Frederick Zimmerman, an expert on media and child health and the chairman of the Department of Health Service at UCLA said, “Kids need laps, not apps.” And whether it is the kid playing the app, or the adult - all family members need time to be together.

5. Model good technology behavior. We can’t expect our kids to set healthy technology limits while we chat into a smartphone wedged cheek-to-shoulder, scrolling the iPad for news with one hand, while stirring tonight’s soup with the other. Our kids imitate what we model - and studies show that to be happy, productive and well-rested people, we need to take proactive steps to minimize our always-on-ever-available status. When you walk in the door to greet your family, put the smart phone (and the iPad, the laptop) away. In her lovely book, The Mindful Child: How to Help Your Kid Manage Stress and Become Happier, Kinder, and More Compassionate, Susan Kaiser Greenland makes the case for the new ABC’s that we should be teaching children: Attention, Balance, Compassion. Teaching attention starts with shutting the devices down.

6. Limit video games, apps and handheld devices to special occasions (airplanes, illness, etc). “All screen time is not equal,” says Michael Rich, director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Boston Children’s Hospital. “What a kid does on an iPad is totally different from what they are doing when they are watching TV. It’s different psychologically, neurologically, educationally - so we can’t just lump all screens together.” Studies show that the more interactive technologies (apps, games) tend to be harder on young, developing brains. Here’s my rule: no violent video games, ever. Educational apps and age-appropriate games are allowed on airplane trips - that’s it.

7. Consider making Sunday a technology Sabbath. (Or if not the whole day, at least part of the day, like after lunch.) Have you ever noticed how amazing it feels when the power goes out? You can hear the birds chirping, you engage in meaningful conversation with your partner, you search for the flashlight and snuggle with your children. If you call technology off-limits on Sunday, your kids may get bored, complain or otherwise make a fuss. But in an interview with Krista Tippett on "On Being," Sherry Turkle, who directs the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, says that we need to teach our children the rewards of solitude - something that our kids will have to work harder to learn ever before. She quotes an old saying: “If you don't teach your children to be alone, they'll only always know how to be lonely."

8. Do not use technology as a babysitter. According to a study by child safety advocacy group Common Sense Media, one in five parents uses a smartphone or tablet to keep children distracted while running errands. It’s convenient, sure - but it also takes away the opportunity for kids to interact with the world, to learn how to manage their own discomfort and to be bored. Boredom is a necessary part of childhood (and adulthood). And who knows what your kids might do when struck with the right balance of boredom and technology restrictions? Just look at Caine Monroy, the nine-year-old boy from East Los Angeles who built an incredible, working arcade out of cardboard boxes from his dad’s auto parts store. If Caine had been playing video games in the corner all summer, would he have masterminded that amazing arcade?

(See also How A 9-Year-Old Boy Became The Latest Interent Meme.)

9. Challenge teachers and administrators to explain how and why they are using technology in the classroom. Are teachers using it because they can? Is the school implementing an iPad program because they feel like they should? There is wide variation across schools in terms of technology use. Some schools are wired around the clock, while others, like the Waldorf Schools - a popular choice among Silicon Valley tech giants - don’t allow technology at all (even at home). Do your research, ask questions and don’t be shy about getting answers.

10. Teach your children to respect technology. Make your own personal gadgets (smartphone, tablet, e-reader, etc) off-limits. Madeline Levine, author of Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success, says that kids need PDF: play time, down time and family time. Teach your children that expensive technology gadgets are not toys. They are tools for adults that, when supervised and used properly, can be a great learning tool. And as they get older, make sure children understand that what they post on the Web, stays on the Web. There is no online eraser.

How do you manage technology in your family? We'd love to know; share your strategies in the comments section.

All images - except Caine Monroy - courtesy of Shutterstock.

Guest author Matthew Bryan Beck is editorial director of The New York Digital.

Everyone wants to work for a hot startup. They’re hip, fun and run by passionate, creative people with exciting, innovative ideas. But working at that awesome startup can come at a cost to your career and your sanity. Consider these points before quitting your safe, secure position at a big, established company:

1. The Hours Are Long

Young companies building a new product or service from the ground up run on small teams, limited resources and no time to spare. And they expect their people to give 110% to the job. Your social life outside the office will likely suffer, and the pressure to stay later and later can make you feel like a deserter if you need to leave the office on time for personal reasons. 

2. The Pay Sucks 

Unless you’re a senior executive of a startup, your compensation may leave something to be desired. The bulk of startup funding goes into the operations and product first, and the people second. For the amount of hours you can be required put in each week, the pay may feel inadequate. The tradeoff that startups offer is the cool factor - plus equity and stock packages. And there may be perks like free snacks and lunches, beer kegs, discounted gym memberships, yoga classes, flexible vacation time, ping-pong, etc.

3. Big Egos Rule

Startups are built on exciting ideas from brilliant minds, but those can also come with egos. Like any workplace, many startups have a pecking order. While most startups advertise a spirit of open forum and democratic exchange of ideas, you may have to earn your stripes before your input is valued and your ideas are implemented. Visionaries are, understandably, protective of their visions, and you may find yourself in a work environment that feels more like a tyranny than a democracy. (Note: Please make sure you're not the one with the ego.)

4. Distractions, Distractions, Distractions

Startups pride themselves on a casual, hoodie-and-jeans company culture, the antithesis of the stereotypical corporate suit. Open, collaborative, cubicle-free working environments foster a sense of community and togetherness. But the frat-house vibe can also be counterproductive and result in a lack of oversight and structure. In this kind of less-than-professional office, employees may get too chummy, spending more time on Facebook, socializing, coffee runs and cigarette breaks than getting work done.

5. You Probably Won't Last

Many new startups suffer from the revolving door syndrome, struggling to keep a stable team. Sometimes they hired the wrong people, but sometimes the person shown the door is you. A recent study of 20,000 new hires by research firm Leadership IQ found that 89% of the time new hires failed, it was for ‘attitudinal reasons’, not lack of skill. Make sure you are a good fit for the startup before submitting your resume. If you do get the job, make sure to bring (and keep) a good attitude.

So Now What?

Keeping positive, staying loyal and consistently producing high-quality work is the best way to impress any company. Working for a startup can be a sacrifice of time and money, but it's also a commitment that can pay off if the company grows rapidly. Many startup employees move on to form their own companies or parlay their experience into an in-demand calling card. If you think you have what it takes, don't let these warnings slow you down.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Guest author Gary Whitehill is Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Startup Weekend.

Entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes. But the most successful pioneers tend to share certain traits. Entrepreneurs are driven, innovative, persistent, resilient, and, as The New York Times’ David Segal suggests, just the right amount of crazy.

The daunting venture of building a company from the ground up requires a type of mania, a type of desire that, on occasion, borders on obsession. An entrepreneur’s startup really is like his or her baby, demanding constant love and attention.

Trace Cohen, President of Launch.it, had this to say about being a startup parent: “It's our job and privilege to do everything in our power to make sure our company grows up to be smart and strong. There is no 9-to-5 when it comes to a startup - it's a new experience for all of us, each and every time.”

This reality presents a significant challenge to both budding and seasoned entrepreneurs. A founder’s love for their company frequently comes at the expense of relationships with flesh-and-blood loved ones.

There's no way to fully avoid that impact, but there are things you can do to preserve some level of balance even as you pursue your startup dreams:

1. Keep Things Simple

With all the complexity at the office, it helps to simplify your personal time. Slowing down your personal life functions as a relaxant. Hurrying from happy-hour with coworkers to dinner with family to coffee with an old friend actually augments the stress accumulated during the workday. The simpler your social life, the more likely you are to actually enjoy your downtime and relax.

Reducing your social engagements also helps focus on the ones that really matter – the ones with family and close friends. Casual acquaintances may fall by the wayside, but in the long run, a few good friends and a supportive family will serve you better than a host of people no real connection to you.

In an interview with Charlie Rose, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg intimates that he subscribes to this philosophy: "I spend a lot of time just, you know, with my girlfriend and my dog… so it’s really simple."

2. Reserve Family Time

'Simple’ is good, but ‘non-existent’ is not. In the midst of a startup, it is very easy to slip from a few social engagements to zero social engagements. But no matter how busy you are, you need to spend at least some time with people outside of work. This means carving out at least an hour per day to spend with your family or close friends.

For much of her career, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has left work at 5:30pm sharp in order to have dinner with her children. Sandberg admits that she returns to her business after dinner, often emailing from her bedroom into the wee hours of the night, but 6pm is dinner, overbearing workload or not.

3. Mix Things Up

When socializing or family time becomes a chore or an item to check off your to-do list, something has gone awry. Richard Branson, perhaps the paragon of the modern entrepreneur, confesses, "I am not able to share my own routine because I don’t have one, since I try to make every day unique." Granted, making "every day unique" is easier when you have your own personal spaceship, but Branson’s sentiment serves as an important counterpoint to Sandberg’s discipline.

4. Choose The Right Partner

Every relationship involves two individuals. You may take every conceivable step to make things work with the people around you, but your partner and friends have to be sympathetic to your cause.

Some relationships are forged in the startup furnace. Companies such as ModCloth, Evernote and Cisco Systems were founded by couples. Even if you're not lucky enough to find a business partner and a life partner in the same person, be sure to find somebody who is willing to support your venture.

Having a go-to support system is an often under-appreciated component of an entrepreneur’s well-being. Ingrid Vanderveldt, Dell’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence, had this to say to me about her husband's importance to her career: ”Glenn is my rock. When I am going a million miles an hour he keeps a solid, steady and focused pace - managing the operations of our businesses and creating a loving home base to come back to. I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for his 100% support.”

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

As part of my research at Forrester, I’ve spent a lot of time getting to know companies developing technology solutions for K-12 and higher education. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) like Coursera and Udacity give students around the world access to high-quality courses for free or at a fraction of the cost of a traditional university. Platforms like Inkling, Kno, and CourseSmart make distributing, purchasing, and consuming digital textbooks more convenient and engaging. Supplemental content sources like Khan Academy and TenMarks give students resources to learn at their own pace.

It’s worth thinking seriously about how these solutions will change the nature of education. Many of the changes are positive. We expand access to education across the globe. At the same time we increase scale, we also enable more individualized, self-paced learning, presumably at a reduced cost. For example, millions of students can dissect a cow’s eye in a virtual biology lab without the incremental cost of buying more cow’s eyes or scalpels or formaldehyde - and they could do it again if they miss something the first time. Through analytics embedded in texts, apps, and diagnostic tools, teachers will get real-time feedback and can make more-informed decisions about how to teach.

Education ≠ Screen Time

But they also make me think that the future of education is a lot of screen time.

We all love screens, but physiologically, they’re not that good for us. They come with tradeoffs of eye strain, bad posture and sleep interference; they’re so immersive that it takes us longer than we think to recover and engage with the physical world, even to the detriment of our and others’ health and safety.

Marshall McLuhan is long passé, but it’s worth considering that if “the medium is the message,” the message we are sending to students is that engaging with content and people via screens is a more valuable use of their time than engaging with the physical world and the people in their physical presence. (We also embrace that message as information workers, but that’s a topic for another day.) K-12 students are in a physical school building for 7 hours or more per day, and college students are on campus together in physical space for most of the year. That may not be the case forever, but today, those are the physical realities of education, and they deserve attention, too.

We need to complement the digital tools we’re developing by strengthening students’:

* Social relationships. Helping answer questions in a MOOC forum is great, but it’s not the sum total of what students need to learn about how to relate to peers and teachers. The flipped classroom concept is one solution - the idea is that students absorb the lecture or course materials online outside of class, and when they arrive to the physical classroom their time is used for discussion or group activities.

* Physical activity. A major downside of screen time is sedentariness, and the research is pretty clear that sitting kills. Intriguingly, wearable devices could actually play a role in increasing students’ activity levels - and could be applied to cross-disciplinary lessons, not just gym class. For example, wearable activity trackers could be used to integrate physical education and math curricula (students move and then analyze the data); add GPS and you get a geography lesson; add heartrate tracking and you move into biology territory.

* Hands-on experimentation. Many research studies show that hands-on experimentation helps students learn better. I’ve experienced this myself recently as a student in a workshop hosted by the software company Intuit, where the company shared its design-thinking approach to innovation with customers and partners - and the participants tested out the methodology with our own hands-on experiments. A new startup high school in San Mateo, Calif., wants to apply this kind of design thinking, influenced by Stanford’s d.school, to its own curriculum.

Technology Is Only Part Of The Education Equation

Technology is just a tool; it’s how we apply it that will determine the future of education. We need to pay attention to what problems we aren’t solving with the current crop of technology innovations - and what gaps these solutions create - so that we can figure out where to innovate next. In particular, we need to complement these tools with innovation in how we use the physical space of learning environments, and how we engage with the people in them.

Organizations like The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz, technology companies like Apple and Intel, numerous software startups, our government, universities, every teacher and every parent actively invest in the future of education. Increasing access, improving outcomes and cutting costs absolutely deserve investment - but so too does the physical experience of learning.

As a technology writer, I hear (and experience) first-world problems every day:

• "Twitter's down."
• "Gmail's borked."
• "My phone battery died."

Any one of those issues is enough, in our day-to-day lives, to at least bug us, and sometimes they're enough to completely disrupt our professional or personal productivity. We can't get things done and we lash out at those we think are responsible. How dare service X fail us and interrupt our work?

You know, first-world problems.

Perhaps that's why I have recently come to the conclusion that Americans, as a group, have no perspective.

The Lack Of Perspective

When I take the time to step away from this over-wired world a bit, the very first thing I usually think of is just how silly all of this hullaballoo really can be. I mean, really, the $500 radio in my pocket just ran out of power and now I have to wait a whole half-hour to charge it again, and that's my big problem?

Smartphones bear much of the ire I have for first-world problems, if only because they exemplify those problems so well: We build a device that keeps us connected with the rest of the world (which we love/hate) and then freak out when said device is unavailable even for a moment.

Smartphones tie into what many people peg as American's big problem: We're too damn fixated on time. Events in our lives are timed to the minute, and any deviation from that mental schedule can cause great stress. Being a writer geared to deadlines, I fall into this trap all of the time.

Instead of living in the moment and enjoying where we are, we tend to focus on the next thing, the next place, the next job. We don't appreciate what we have and the time we spend with friends and family, slotted between hockey practice for Junior and the DVRed episodes of Downton Abbey we need to watch.

Here's a real example of how bad not appreciating what we have has gotten. And it involves one of our favorite things: not time, but money.

How Good Do You Really Have It?

Global Rich List is not a new site, but when my pastor mentioned it during his sermon last week, I thought I'd give it a whirl.

The idea behind the site is simple: type in your annual income in pounds, dollars (US or Canadian) or euros and the site will spit back your wealth rank compared with all the people on the planet.

I popped in my annual income, and found to my surprise that I am the 24,860,227th richest person in the world.

At first glance, that sounds depressing, doesn't it? But think that through a bit. 24.8 millionth-ish… on a planet with more than seven billion people. That puts me, a guy who fits squarely in the U.S. middle class, within the top 0.41% wealthiest people in the world.

It gets a bit worse. I added my wife's income, and suddenly there are only 3.9 million-with-an-m people in the world making more money than us.

Holy crap.

Not Pride, Dismay And Embarassment

Be assured, the emotion I was feeling at this point is not pride. It's dismay, with quite a bit of embarrassment thrown in. All of the complaining I do about funds being tight and spending too much at the store seems foolish and arrogant when I think that 99.94% of the humans on planet Earth earn less than my family.

Pulling back that focus to the U.S. as a whole, and you can see why I think that people in our society need to get over themselves.

To give you an idea of just how rich Americans are, in Tuesday night's State of the Union address, President Obama said that a person with two kids working full time at minimum wage would fall below the poverty line, as defined here in the U.S. Full time at the U.S. $7.50 minimum wage is $15,000 annually.

According to Global Rich List, a person earning that salary would be the 726,528,729th richest person in the world, and still be in the top 12.1% of earners on Earth.

Sometimes it takes a change in perspective like this to make you re-think your priorities. I'm not going to shed my earthly possessions and live the life of a hermit, but already I have less acquisitiveness about "stuff" than I used to feel.

Appreciating what we have, be it things, time or the people around us, is definitely a better way to live than always wanting more. Because when you always want more, you will think you have less.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

It looks like we're not the only ones unplugging from Facebook. According to new data published on Tuesday by the Pew Research Center, 61% of current Facebook users have taken a break from the infamously addictive social network. The telephone survey culled its data from a sample of 1,006 adults in the U.S in December 2012.

Some more interesting tidbits about these Facebook comings and goings:

• 67% of online Americans are Facebook users
• 8% of online adults who do not currently use Facebook are interested in becoming Facebook users in the future.
• 20% of the online adults who don't currently use Facebook say that they used to use the site.
• 8% of the 61% of users admitted to taking a break from Facebook due to to concerns that they were spending too much time on the site.
• 21% of those users said that their break from Facebook was the result of being busy and not having time to spend on the site.
• 28% of Facebook users say the site has become less important to them than it was a year ago. 
• Only 3% of Facebook users say they plan to spend more time on Facebook in the coming year.
• 27% of Facebook users say they plan to spend less time on the social network in the next year. (Good luck with that!)
• Some 38% of Facebook users ages 18-29 expect to spend less time using the site in 2013.
• 92% of people who use social networking sites maintain a Facebook profile.

Pew also includes a funny little selection of comments in which people explain their Facebook breaks. Justifications include everything from “Too much drama" to “I gave it up for Lent.” Fair enough. 

The big finding here is that almost two-thirds of Facebook users have taken a break from the site. Facebook owns an insane amount of engagement, especially on mobile devices. But the majority of its users have been compelled to step back, voluntarily taking a break from the social network for a period of at least several weeks. Is the social network suffering from dangerous levels of user fatigue? 

But of course, while only 3% of users plan to spend more time on Facebook in 2013 than in 2012, the majority of Facebook users will likely maintain or increase the time they spend on the site as the company figures out new ways to become even stickier with its huge user base.

Have you considered taking a Facebook break? Have you pulled it off?

We're in the process. One day at a time, right?

Image by ReadWrite

Ready to take a break from Facebook, or just want a nice local backup of all the data you've uploaded to the social network over the years?

Turns out that downloading your stuff from Facebook is a lot easier than it used to be. Even for someone like me, who's racked up a massive amount of data over the years.

As Facebook user #806469, I was among the first million people to join the service, and I've used it pretty steadily since the spring of 2004 - accumulating more and more history all the time. Perhaps most importantly, I've uploaded 4,186 photos to date, and I want to make sure I keep every one of them. Downloading all of my contacts would be nice too, though Facebook doesn't make that easy.

Backing up everything else was surprisingly straightforward, however, using Facebook's built-in archival tools. 

5 Steps To Backing Up Facebook

Step 1. Click the little gear icon in the upper right corner and navigate to Account Settings.

Step 2. Figure out what you're after. You can download the primary copy of your user data or you can choose to download an "expanded archive.. The latter is an interesting, more technical glimpse at your Facebook activity over time (shown below). Facebook has a nice guide that breaks down what you'll find where. I downloaded both, because, well, why not?

Step 3.  Input your password to start downloading a copy of your information. Amazingly, my download was only 350MB, and considering how many photos I have stored, I imagine that's on the (very) high end compared to most Facebook users.

Step 4. Pore over your data! You'll get a folder with your user name that you can explore. It has two main subfolders: html and photos. The first one - html - is where all of your archived messages, likes, wall posts and everything else shows up. In the "friends" file you might be able to find some of your Facebook friends' email addresses included to the right. There's also an html version of your photo albums in here. The second main folder is a very nicely packaged directory of all of your photos in .jpeg form. 

Step 5. If you opted to download the expanded archive, you'll have even more weird stuff to check out. Try the deleted friends folder for starters. The pokes folder is predictably also a good time stroll down memory lane. 

All told, this process is way easier than I thought it would be. And I'm still kind of amazed that the export tool hands over all of your photos in .jpeg form.

Contact Information Is The Sticking Point

Unfortunately, Facebook keeps an iron grip on the email addresses and phone numbers of your Facebook friends. Considering those would be a pretty handy way to cut out the big blue social network altogether, it makes sense from Zuckerberg's perspective, but it's still annoying. There used to be a workaround involving Yahoo Mail that's since been patched, so if you know of any good, safe and legal ways to extract your contacts from Facebook, do tell in the comments.

That's it.

Backing up your Facebook data is a good idea whether you have plans to delete your Facebook account, want to take a break or just want a little peace of mind by having all your Facebook data at hand. Best of all, a process that used to involve way more identity confirmation and often third-party browser plugins and the like is amazingly easy these days. 

Image of Facebook in browser via Shutterstock.

Ah! Good morning! I'm feeling mighty fine! How are you? Oh, why am I so cheerful this morning?

Because Twitter was down.

It's coming back online now, but it was straight-up out of commission for most of the morning. It's the third outage this month, in fact. And it makes me so happy each time. I only wish this morning's outage had lasted a little longer into the day for us West Coast folks.

Snow Day

Why the schadenfreude, you might ask? Why take delight at the misfortune of others? Well, let me be clear. I have endless compassion for the brilliant engineers at Twitter. They've built something unbelievably powerful, and it's a testament to their talents that it runs at all. But I think the human users who spin the wheels of that real-time interruption machine could use a break every once in a while.

When Twitter is down, it's like a Snow Day on the Internet.

I understand that most people can and do use Twitter by choice. That's a very good thing. As an intentional hobby, Twitter is immensely valuable. Just dipping into the stream can provide an hour's or a day's worth of news, humor and even friendship, if you keep your Twitter feed tidy enough. "Twitter is my rosary," my word-hero Erin Kissane once said.

Twitter is my rosary.

— erin kissane (@kissane) December 9, 2011

But Twitter is slightly darker for some of its users. In fact, it's the dark part that Twitter the company has decided to focus on for its business goals. Those users would be the media. That's us.

For the blogosphere, Twitter is the tip of the spear. Sifting through it all day for leads is the only way to even try to know what's happening everywhere at once. And if a blogger like me wants to take a break from Twitter to concentrate on something, too bad. If I do, I'll miss a hundred other things. So, except for those brilliant emergencies at the top of the news cycle, the decision to concentrate is basically the decision to give up.

The Heartbeat

Most of the time, to ignore Twitter is to fall behind. Whether you care about that or not is up to you, unless it's your job. But not on Internet Snow Days. On Snow Days, everything is nice and quiet.

I'm just being poetic, of course. Twitter outages are actually excellent opportunities to break news, but that's precisely because so many other people are out playing in the snow. The media have become so dependent on this one service, this one critical point of failure, that it has begun to coalesce around it. Twitter is the heartbeat of the media now. That's great for Twitter. Long may it reign.

But for me, as a little neuron in the brain of the media, I could use a rest.

Oh, what? Twitter's back up? Great. I'll refill the coffee.

Photo credit: Jon Mitchell

Guest author Sarah Rotman Epps is a Senior Analyst at Forrester Research.

One of the most delightful product features I saw at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this month came from an unexpected source: the new BlackBerry 10 operating system from Research In Motion (RIM).

While RIM is battling from behind with BB10, there’s a lot to like about this product, from the super-smart contextual prediction keyboard to the super-efficient BlackBerry Hub. The feature of BB10 that I like best is called “BlackBerry Balance,” which allows users to selectively turn off work-related email and apps for specified periods of time. BlackBerry Balance is significant for three reasons:

1. It’s designed for consumers (workers), not IT administrators. This is a big, big deal for RIM, a company known for making products that were favorites of IT shops. In the past, IT administrators had all the power over corporate BlackBerrys -they could not only kill a user's device remotely but also could limit access to features like the app store.

With BB10, it’s IT admins who are in a box - they can give users access to corporate email and applications, but those are siloed on the device, and BlackBerry Balance lets workers decide when to turn work off while still using their devices for fun stuff.

2. It puts workers in control of their work-life balance. The BlackBerry Hub, which unifies communications and alerts from text messages, calls, email and social networks, makes communicating very efficient (for example, you can reply to tweets and Facebook messages directly from the Hub without opening separate applications), but it could easily be overwhelming too. With BlackBerry Balance, consumers don't have to fear they’ll be bombarded with work-related messages when they use the Hub on personal time.

3. It’s a model for other mobile OSes to follow. Other than Apple’s “Do Not Disturb” feature on iOS, there are very few features I’ve seen on mobile operating systems that do anything to assuage the pains of the perpetually connected consumer. It’s great to see RIM leading here, and I hope to see other companies follow with their own innovative features.

Smartphones enable perpetual connectivity, but they should also empower consumers to set their own demands for how and when they want to be connected.

Image from BlackBerry YouTube video.

Guest author Sarah Rotman Epps is a Senior Analyst at Forrester Research.

Computing is permeating domains that were previously not connected. That theme was readily observable at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last week, where sensor-powered devices for your plants, pets, posture and dining utensils were all on display, not to mention the numerous devices for tracking your sleep and exercise.

Enhance? Or Replace?

These devices are undoubtedly useful, but do we really need devices to replace our basic powers of observation?

For example, the Flower Power plant sensor by Parrot tells you when your plant needs more or less sunshine, water or fertilizer. Now, I am the first to admit failure in gardening - usually, my plants get eaten by critters before they can die of over- or under-watering - and if Flower Power brings success to more would-be gardeners, fine.

However, it’s worth considering what we might be missing by outsourcing our powers of observation to a sensor and a smartphone.

Will these tools, over time, enhance our powers of observation (i.e., would we eventually recognize the signs of a light-starved plant with our own eyes, and decrease our dependence on the device)? Or would looking at plants and understanding what they’re telling us become a skill we replace with another skill? (We don’t need to remember phone numbers anymore, for example, but we do need to discern spam emails from real ones. Evolution never ceases!)

We should push sensor-laden devices - and our use of them - to enhance, not outsource, our cognitive experience.

Spidey-Sense Superpowers!

An example (also from CES) of a product that does this is the Lapka: an elegantly designed “personal environment monitor” that senses humidity, pesticides (via a small block you "plug in" to a fruit or vegetable via a headphone jack), electromagnetic fields and radiation, through a tactile interface of wooden and plastic blocks that tether to your smartphone for data display. I like this product because it makes accessible data about our physical environment that we previously could not get to unaided. That data lets us make better-informed decisions.

Basically, I want superpowers: I want devices and applications to help us achieve more as humans than we could without them.

Sometimes this might be about automating tasks, like the app EasilyDo does, that don’t add value to our lives, such as merging duplicate contacts in our address book.

Other times it might be about giving us access to information about our circadian rhythm, like the larklife does, so we can optimize our energy for the things we care about most, like being creative at work or being with our families.

As computing permeates more domains of our existence, we have the opportunity to demand more of our devices, and our use of them. As we plug in our plants and our forks, let’s just stop for a moment to evaluate the capabilities these new tools give us... and what jobs our old tools (and often our own senses) do just fine.

Editors Note: This is part one of a series on the best strategies for limiting noise, junk and distractions in your digital life. 

We're halfway through January and many people are very much still in how-can-I-improve-my-life mode. If joining the gym or deactivating Facebook hasn't made you feel like a better human yet, here's another idea: The Digital Purge. 

It's been four years since Nicholas Carr wrote his famous story in The Atlantic about whether Google (and by extension, the Internet) is making us "stupid." That article, along with his book The Shallows kicked off a huge debate about the effects the Web is having on our brains, particularly our ability to think deeply or retain information. Since then, with the rise of smartphones, our attention has become even more fractured. The flood of information has become even more constant and overwhelming - and it affects more and more people all the time. 

Fortunately, there are ways to minimize the noise. One thing that would help many people is a periodic purge of all their feeds, subscriptions, emails, notifications and yes, even friends. Not every button will be painless to click. But your brain will feel better for it. And email is the perfect place to start. 

How To Take Control Of Your Inbox 

Even if you've been fairly organized about email - setting up folders or tags, utilizing stars and color-coding - chances are your inbox has outgrown your best efforts to tame it. 

If you're like me, you look at your inbox with one agenda in mind: process it. See if you have any new emails, read them, respond to the ones you starred earlier, draft new messages. Seldom do we take a step back and think about what our inbox looks like and why. 

So many apps, social networks and commerce sites make the same ballsy, if not outright obnoxious assumption: If you're signing up to use this product, you want us to email you all the time. And even if you don't, we'll keep that box checked by default and hope you won't notice. You want push notifications on your phone? Just click "OK." Trust us. 

Screw all of that.  

Plenty of sites and services that are no doubht bombarding your inbox right now. They need to be zapped. Is Facebook telling you every time somebody likes your vacation photos? Does Twitter fill you in every time anyone does anything anywhere near one of your tweets? Don't you constantly check these services anyway? Wait, a random high school acquaintance joined Pinterest?? I wonder what kind of cupcakes they're pinning. 

You don't need those emails. In 15 minutes you can go through and unsubscribe to most of them, zapping anything that doesn't lend itself to a more productive or fulfilling life. For some, you'll need to navigate the original website's notifications settings (try not to get distracted by Grumpy Cat on the way). For others, the "unsubscribe" link is right there at the bottom of the newsletter, as required by law. Many times, it actually works properly, too!

When It Doubt, Go Nuclear With Filters

To nuke the rest, set up a series of rules (this works differently depending on your email provider). In Gmail, it's easy. When you're viewing an offending message, you can click the "More" button in the upper right and then select "Filter messages like these." From there, you can tell Gmail to archive, mark as unread or delete any message with a given sender or subject line. Likewise, if there are any messages you definitely don't want to miss, you can set up a filter that will automatically star them. 

Limit Your Exposure To Email 

But here's the real issue: If you're habitually checking your email dozens of times per day, stop it.  For most of us, the amount of attention we pay our inboxes each day vastly outweighs the value we realistically derive from it. 

Ironically, not checking your email it requires conscious effort, since we've trained our brains to expect a never-ending flow of messages, one of which just might be that super-important opportunity we've been waiting for. 

Our brains need to be re-trained. To do this, we need to turn off the god forsaken email notifications and set aside specific chunks of time for dealing with email. Of course, productivity gurus have been telling us this for years. But it's worthless advice unless we actually do it.

But here's the key. It's not enough to re-train ourselves. While we're at it, we need to re-train those with whom we communicate via email so they no longer expect immediate responses to every message. Surprisingly, a growing number of employers are actually encouraging this practice, especially after hours. (See Why I'm Joining The Movement To Stop Answering After-Hours Email.) 

They know that constant email interruptions aren't good for productivity. We need to learn that lesson as well.

Lead photo by Liz West. 

Prologue

We live in a world dominated by technological immediacy. In so many ways, the interest and ability to get lost in a long story that takes us away from this world is fading from our popular consciousness. 

Sometimes, we need to take a Pause. Pick up a book you may never have thought of reading before and get lost in a different world. You just might find something that becomes an integral part of how you live your life, away from the distractions of Twitter and Facebook, iPhones and Android.

My escape from technology (and all of the other tribulations of life) has come in the form of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. The 15-book series was 23 years in the making. Each book has been a New York Times bestseller. The final book, A Memory of Light, was released earlier this month and is already an Amazon bestseller. 

Below is a tribute to the series, told in the style of Jordan, which chronicles my journey through the Wheel of Time and how it has long served to put the real world into perspective. 

Book 1: The Eye Of The World

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one age, called the Modern Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose among the islands of the Gulf of Maine. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginning nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.

Inland the wind blew. Cold and bitter, it whipped the trees on the coast and frothed the tops of blue-grey waves in to white caps. It blew through the sea walls and around small islands, casting icy tendrils of snow across the landscape lush with green pine trees. The wind followed a road, long with pavement broken by years of patching from the damage of excessive winters, towards a small two-story house that lay slumbering in the predawn light.

The wind rattled the windows of the house, causing a boy, midway through his 10th year, to pull his blanket closer around his shoulders. It was Christmas Day, or the Festival of Lights as the boy was beginning to think of it, and he had woken before the rest of his family to raid his stocking, bulging full next to those of his brothers and sisters. He was allowed to open his stocking when he woke up - but not yet the massive pile of wrapped gifts under a well-decorated and brightly lit tree next to the hearth. 

A pile of candy and small toys lay strewn around the boy. His mother, he was long past the concept of Santa Claus, always liked to stuff the stockings with goodies for the children, along with items that would likely prove useful in the year to come. A paperback book lay among the rubble, small but thick, with a picture of two people on horseback, one a tall man in majestic armor, the other a small woman garbed in white. The boy looked at the book and set it aside, moving on to more exciting discoveries among the stocking.

The title of the book read The Eye Of The World, the first book of The Wheel of Time, by an author named Robert Jordan. The boy did not know it at the time, but the book, and the series that followed, would consume his consciousness and inform his life for the next 20-plus years. 

Book 8: The Path of Daggers

The boy was growing into a young man. Not quite yet an adult, he sat in his basement bedroom in the new house his parents had just bought. It was late June and the boy was alone and angry. His parents had moved from that Maine house to one in mountain foothills of Virginia, taking him away from the friends he had known all his life, just as summer started. So, he turned to friends he knew would never abandon him, devouring the books that had become some of his most prized possessions. 

He was reading The Path of Daggers, the eighth book to the Wheel of Time. It had come out the fall of the year before, but the boy had not yet gotten around to reading it. He had a tradition that must be followed. When Jordan released a new Wheel of Time book, the boy would read every book in the series again before starting the new one. With every book nearly 800 to 1,000 pages, the tradition was beginning to take a long time. 

He followed the path of his friends. Rand al’Thor, the Dragon Reborn. Mat Cauthon, the scoundrel, gambling son of battles. Perrin Aybara, the stolid blacksmith. Egween al’Vere and Nynaeve al’Meara, the stubborn but talented fledgling Aes Sedai. The people of the Two Rivers that fought to save the world and win Tarmon Gai’don, the last battle between the forces of Light and Shadow.

The books were the boy’s solace and his escape, especially through this summer, one of the most difficult and disappointing of his life. He had begun to associate himself with various characters' traits. He thought of the Two Rivers as his former home in Maine, a place he had been forced to leave. He did not know it then, but just like the characters of the Wheel of Time, leaving his Two Rivers would ultimately be the best thing for him. 

Book 11: Knife of Dreams

The boy was now a man, still young and full of the arrogance of a young adult who has tasted some early success. 

There was also pain. Deep, emotional pain. He did not know it then, but this pain was a thing that many people his age experienced. It was an existential rift, threatening to tear his soul apart. 

The young man swallowed the pain, allowed it to harden him and make him cold, calculating. He believed that allowing the pain to make his heart a stone gave him strength. He did not know how foolish he was.

The young man sat in his apartment, reading Knife of Dreams, the 11th book of the Wheel of Time, which had just been released. He was alone, except for his dog, and enjoyed the silence and solitude of his self-mandated exile to University. He had left his friends behind and looked to make a new life for himself.

It was hard not to notice the similarities between himself and Rand al’Thor. The Dragon Reborn also faced an existential crisis, allowing himself to become hard to the point of breaking. A darkness was consuming him, to the detriment of the world he was destined to protect. 

While the young man sympathized with the Dragon Reborn and saw the correlation in their predicaments, he thought himself more like Mat Cauthon. Mat was a gambler and a carouser, a world-class complainer, a scamp, a rogue and a scoundrel. These were traits that the young man could get behind. Mat was also brilliant and crafty and, while he complained about it, would always end up doing the right thing. Even if it was difficult.

Book 12: The Gathering Storm

It had been years since the man had thought of the Wheel of Time. Robert Jordan had died in 2007 and the man wondered if the series would ever be finished. Finally, a new book had been released, completed by Brandon Sanderson, a fantasy writer picked by Jordan’s widow Harriet McDougal to finish the series. 

The man had, more or less, passed his existential crisis. Reading The Gathering Storm, the 12th book of the Wheel of Time, the man hoped that the Dragon Reborn would as well. After all, the fate of the world rested on his shoulders.

The man, no longer a boy and past the angst of young adulthood, begun to think of himself like Perrin Aybara, the blacksmith turned wolfbrother, turned reluctant lord of his people, turned force of nature. Perrin, above all else, was responsible. Levelheaded and deep thinking, practical and meticulous, Perrin’s ability to think through all the aspects of a problem gave him power. Once set upon a task, Perrin would see it to the end and do it right. Though the man still embodied aspects of both Rand and Mat (especially Mat), Perrin was a guide through the heart of darkness.

By the end of the 12th book, Rand indeed had found his heart again. He learned how to laugh, to accept his fate while marshaling his skill and resources to the task in front of him. It had taken a long time for Rand to come to grips with himself and learn to smile again, to trust people. Just like it had been so many other times in their lives together, the man and the Dragon Reborn had reached the same point in their lives at the same time.

Book 14: A Memory of Light

The Last Battle was coming. The man could not wait. 

He took upon the massive undertaking in July to read all 14 books (including the prequel New Spring) before the 15th and final book, A Memory Of Light, arrived in January of 2013. 

It had been a long time since the man had read all the books. The longer the Wheel of Time series ran, the harder it was to re-read all the previous books leading up to the latest one. The man had taken to re-reading only the previous two or three before starting the newest release. 

It was like coming home. 

He relished the flight from the Two Rivers, having forgotten how engaging and exotic the first few books had been. He grew weary when the story dragged after the eighth book, when Jordan spent more time letting Aes Sedai argue than advancing the plot. He felt the tingle of anticipation reading the two Sanderson books before A Memory of Light, and respecting Sanderson for his brilliant stewardship of the beloved series. 

As the man moved through the series, all four million words of it, he recalled the path he had taken to this point and how the characters of the Wheel of Time had been his companions, his Light, through his life. It was a catharsis, the pain and joy, trials and tribulations of his teens and 20s put to bed through his journey, one last time, through the Wheel of Time. 

The series, like it had been so many times before, were his escape. His Pause. A respite from a life that had become dominated by smartphones and social media, the endless maw of his own writing, chronicling the world of technology in his day-to-day life. 

And finally, after so many years of waiting, the final chapter had arrived.

Epilogue

The man wept. Uncontrollable, body-shaking sobs ran through him. 

He had been up most of the night before. A Memory of Light, it turned out, was almost all he had hoped it to be. Characters he cared for fought and died, hundreds of pages of endless battle making up for the middle books that had been nothing but dialogue. The Last Battle grew desperate, the characters weary and exhausted from fighting the Shadow in a battle that seemingly would never end. The man, fighting his own exhaustion, fell asleep with the book in his hand.

When he woke, he could not simply put the book aside and start his daily work. After more than 20 years, he was not going to wait another hour to see if the Dragon Reborn would kill the Dark One.

The last 300 pages of the Wheel of Time were intense and chaotic, hope mixed with despair. The man’s weeping had much to do with the plight of the characters, but also the path of his own life reflected through them. In the end, he felt raw, tired but happy. He knew the Wheel of Time was more than just an epic fantasy series written by a talented author. It was part of him and he was part of it. He closed the book and sighed, wiping tears from his cheeks.

There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was an ending. 

Let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time. 

I first noticed something was off when I went to pay my rent one month. The window for a timely online transfer of funds was closing, so to get the money to my landlord in time, I'd have to do something unusual. I took out my checkbook, grabbed a pen and started writing the date. 

It felt weird. My hand cramped a little, churning out numbers and letters with the slightest - but still noticeable - discomfort. My handwriting sucked. It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't actually written anything by hand in a long, long time. Just a few years earlier, I kept a paper journal by my bed and would buy three-packs of Moleskin notebooks for brainstorming, sketching and jotting things down. What happened? 

Over the course of the last four or five years, several little computers have found their way into my life. Bit by bit, my professional and creative existence made the transition to an entirely digital universe. At my old job managing digital publishing for a newspaper, the iPad soon replaced my spiral notebook in meetings. Then I left the print world to work on the Internet full-time. I could even sign my freelance contracts with my finger on an iPad.

Who needed paper? Isn't the future amazing? Look, more tweets. Wait, what was I saying?

Our Pixel-Based Lives

Before long, my documents, journal, blog post drafts and photos were living in some cloud-based repository that was readily accessible from any of my devices, at least one of which I kept by my bedside (supplanting the paper journal, magazines and alarm clock with apps). Instead of keeping a "to do" list on paper, I tapped important items into the Reminders app on my phone, which automatically synced with my iPad and laptop, each of which would then buzz with a notification at a time and even place of my choosing.

It's all pretty miraculous if you think about it. But while this digital transformation introduced heretofore inconceivable levels of convenience and productivity into my life, some things can get lost in all that digital noise. At the very least, I should be able to comfortably write the goddamn date.  

Keeping One Foot In The Analog World

When I first met my girlfriend, we would cowork from cafes together. Even though she runs a popular local blog in Philadelphia and spends much of her time on the Internet, I noticed that she hadn't taken the digital plunge quite as deeply as I had. As I typed away on my laptop in the cafe, periodically referencing a propped up iPad, she closed her MacBook's lid and cracked open a Moleskin notebook and started writing down important-looking notes. She even had a paper-based planner, eschewing the cloud-synced, location-aware multi-device wonders of iCal and Reminders in favor of something decidedly more old school. 

By this time, I had already resolved to hand-write things more often. And when I did, I found I was better able to focus on the task at hand, far away from the dinging notifications, crowded inboxes, social status updates and ever-proliferating browser tabs. Watching another digital citizen put a pen to paper and get things done just as effectively, if not more so, just confirmed what I already knew: Life wasn't meant to be lived entirely in some company's cloud. And when it comes to productivity, we need more than apps. 

The Science Of Writing Vs. Typing

A few years back, there were a bunch of stories in the press about the science of writing things by hand. As it turns out, our brains work differently when we form letters with a hand-held implement - and we learn more effectively than when we type. This makes total sense. I've long noticed that when I'm writing in a paper journal, it mentally feels different than when I'm typing out my thoughts on a computer. I thought it had something to do with the more focused nature of paper vs. connected devices. As it turns out, there's more to it than that.  

Explains Lifehacker: 

Writing stimulates a bunch of cells at the base of the brain called the reticular activating system (RAS). The RAS acts as a filter for everything your brain needs to process, giving more importance to the stuff that you're actively focusing on at the moment—something that the physical act of writing brings to the forefront. 

Meanwhile, a series of studies conducted in the last few years have indicated that students learn more effectively when they form letters and shapes by hand as opposed to doing so digitally. 

Technology has a way of augmenting our imperfect brains and making us more productive. Personally, I still prefer to have a notification ding with a reminder to do something I committed to several days ago. In some ways, all this tech does enhance our increasingly complex lives. It makes it easier to navigate, harder to lose track of things, more convenient to stay in touch and nearly effortless to discover new places. 

But just like it's still nice to curl up with a book made of trees or play a vinyl record, there's still room for the analog in our productive lives. Sure, that IFTTT recipe connecting your Evernote account to Dropbox or Gmail looks awesome. But don't forget to pick up a pen from time to time. 

Lead photo by puuikibeach.

I took two weeks completely offline over the Holidays, and I learned something humbling. I like to blame technology itself for encouraging bad habits.

But in my reluctance to come back onto the grid this week, I eased in cautiously, and I realized that most of the problems just arise from me using tech too much and without enough intention. When I use my gadgets and services more deliberately and less often, the problems mostly go away, but still leave me with the benefits of being connected.

Maybe that sounds obvious. But what's less obvious is the right way to change one's habits to get used to being more deliberate about tech. Here are five New Year's resolutions I made that are already helping:

1. Rearrange Your Bookmarks And Home Screen

The most important thing I've done to encourage better tech habits is to move the "bad" things out of sight. Twitter is my big problem; If it's ever appropriate to describe a tech obsession as an addiction, I am addicted to Twitter. So I moved my Twitter app off of the front screen of my smartphone. That little extra effort it now takes to launch Twitter is just enough friction to keep me from doing it so compulsively.

The desktop version of this is just as useful. If Facebook is your first bookmark or — God forbid — your home page, what do you think is going to happen? If your browser auto-fills to Facebook.com whenever you press the F key, turn off auto-fill. It may not seem like much, but these kinds of little obstacles make a huge difference in moderating your habits.

2. Cut Out The Push Notifications

I'm never going to let up on this, even though I've said it before. Push notifications are the devil. Their entire purpose is to interrupt you. Turn all of them off unless missing them could cause harm to yourself or others - or get you fired.

3. Take Breaks With Time Out Apps

This one has been huge for me. I use a Mac app called Time Out that grays out my screen at regular intervals throughout the day and forces me to get up and stretch. There's one called Workrave for Linux and Windows. Regular breaks are not just good for resetting your brain. You need to take them to prevent repetitive stress injuries. Also, sitting kills.

4. Get A Real Alarm Clock

Do not use your phone or your tablet as an alarm clock. If you do, the first thing you'll see when you wake up is all the Internet crap you have to check, and then you're instantly stressed out. Get an alarm clock. Remember alarm clocks? They're not that expensive and you can find ones with all kinds of cool bells and whistles.

This is one my friends Brooke and Levi from Digital Detox insist upon, and I resisted, but I have to give in now. Phones in the bedroom are terrible. Whatever your phone is buzzing about can wait until morning. If you need to receive emergency calls and don't have a landline, I suppose you can use Do Not Disturb mode, but that's cheating.

5. Disconnect Two Hours Before Bed

I know I'm going to break this resolution, but I'm making it anyway. Our digital habits are built around constant stimulation. They should not be allowed to encroach on sleep. Sleep is too important. So turn the devices off and wind down for a while before going to bed. Doesn't that sound peaceful?

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Guest author Tasso Roumeliotis is founder and CEO of Location Labs.

I’ve spent more than a decade building a business around creating mobile apps that help families stay safe and connected. Though my livelihood depends on everyone’s continued use of mobile phones, several recent statistics about our relationships with phones have alarmed me.

• 58% of kids 13-17 have smartphones.
• More than 60% of teens text during class and after bedtime.
• Most students can stay on task for only three minutes before “needing” to interact with technology.

Giving up phones completely isn’t the answer, of course. But the alarm these issues raise in me is insistent. I began to understand it better one recent evening when I noticed how nuts it made me to see my 12-year-old daughter hunched over her smartphone, texting like crazy. I wanted to grab it and say, “Go outside! Read a book! Climb a tree!” And then I realized: all this had gone through my mind during a brief moment… when I’d looked up from my own phone.

The Parental Gut-Check

The surest gut-check I know for whether or not something is a good idea is if I’d want my kids to do it — or to see me doing it. For instance, should I tell a lie, even a little one? Maybe not. Or indulge in dessert every day? Nope. So when I justify my own constant phone use as being “necessary to my work” or “just part of life today,” I have to admit I’m being a hypocrite.

The thing is, I truly believe that mobile technology offers a lot of good — safety, global community, boundary-pushing forms of entertainment. So why can’t I shake that feeling that it’s using me more than I’m using it?

Maybe because it is.

A lot of what goes on a mobile phone is built to be addictive. And that’s where I’ve had to draw a line — for myself, first.

This has meant being honest with myself about my own habits. How can I possibly raise my children to have a healthy relationship with technology unless I can show them what that actually looks like? I have to walk the walk.

5 Mobile Phone Rules

So here are a few ways I’m getting started on my own habits, before I work with my wife to institute real—and honest—guidelines for the whole family:

1. Getting online is grounded. I travel often. My rule for myself? No connecting on planes. No Wi-Fi, no phone. This is my time to think, to read (a book made of paper!), to just be. To sit and be absolutely amazed that we’re 30,000 feet in the air, looking down at clouds. Something will be lost in my life if I ever fail to appreciate the wonder of that.
2. The best part of waking up is… waking up. I have vowed to leave my phone and computer alone until I’ve had my morning run, greeted my wife and children, finished a pot of green tea, looked out our kitchen window, and eaten breakfast. Then, and only then, will I check in online. There’s nothing happening first thing in the morning that can’t wait an hour or two (or three!). If it’s an absolute emergency, someone will call. And starting the day in that peaceful state pays dividends, many times over, for every aspect of my health.
3. Keep track of time. I have begun setting the timer on my phone when I check in on social media. For example, I will usually set the timer at 10 minutes to check for birthdays on Facebook or to scan what articles are trending. The maximum time I allow myself at any one social media session is 20 minutes (if I want to reconnect with someone or do some deeper reading). If I don’t set this boundary, it’s down the rabbit hole I go, wondering where the time went. And using a phone’s built-in timer function is a really satisfying way to use its “power of good” to combat its “darker side.”
4. Arriving home is sacred. I work a lot. When I come home at the end of the day (which doesn’t even happen every day), I may not have seen my kids for as long as 12 hours. So the moment I arrive, the phone goes away. So far, that’s meant I’ve spent a couple minutes furiously emailing on the front porch, but only so I could stick to my promise to leave my phone on the table by the door, with my keys and wallet. When I get home, I want to be there. For real. Answering emails can wait.
5. The phone is a camera — just a camera. Like most parents, I love to take pictures of my kids, especially when we choose pumpkins at Halloween or a tree at Christmas. And like most parents, I love to share those pictures. But I realized that pausing for a moment to snap a photo is a lot different than taking a photo, saving it, going to Facebook, sharing it, tagging everyone, noting the location and then responding to comments. That can wait until later. So these days, when I enjoy the fact that a phone is also a camera (which, by the way, is really cool), I treat it like it’s only a camera. All the other stuff can come later, when my kids are in bed.

How about you? Is there anything you don’t like about your relationship with your phone? What are your plans for taking the reins? Please share your own tips — I’d love to hear about them and give them a try.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

It’s Christmas Day and amidst the running tots and stress-inducing in-laws, you sneak away for a few moments to... well, check up on work. Nothing too extensive, probably: You draft a few emails, check the progress of some projects and maybe send a few text messages

It used to be that unless there was an emergency or you worked at certain kinds of jobs - at an airline perhaps, or a Chinese restaurant - big holidays like Christmas meant you were off the hook for work. But in today's 24 x 7, always-connected world, many digital workers can't seem to tear themselves away from work even for one day. Whether or not they're really needed.

I am guilty of this very pathology, and odds are, you are too. 

Who Was Working?

I put the question of working on Christmas to Twitter, and found plenty of kindred spirits - especially among writers. LA Weekly Web editor Jake Swearingen wrote “[b]ecause dipping Internet traffic means you gotta hustle up PVs [page views] even more than usual.”

Declan Skews, a writer in the UK, tweeted some truth about our 24-hour news cycle: “The flow of information never stops. It's easy to fall behind if I don't read a lot everyday (and write at least a little bit).”  

Fredric Paul, ReadWrite's own managing editor, admitted to checking his email, and so did Jenn Sheppard, the publisher at the nonprofit Florida Trail Riders. Sarah Bennett, who runs the hyperlocal news site Long Beach Post, wrote that if she doesn't check her email and "write the stories, no one will!"  

It isn't just writer types: Alex Clote, the co-founder of Cloze, a start-up filtering your electronic communications, wrote he "carved out an hour to catch up after Santa came" because "even on a holiday there are responsibilities."

What Were They Doing?

Working on the holidays has become so common, business intranet service Bitrix24 found 17% of its users (which service employees from companies from like Xerox and Toshiba to Volkswagen and Vogue Magazine) checked in or did some light work on Christmas Day (and 12% did so on Christmas Eve).

According to Bitrix24, holiday working tasks broke down this way: 47% sent instant messages, 11% shared documents and 9% engaged in “task tracking.” Owners of mobile devices were more active than the average Christmas worker, with Android users beating out iPhone users by a small margin: 21% of Android users clocked in some light Christmas work, compared to 19% of Apple faithful.  

Knowledge workers clocking in over the Holidays were led by North Americans: 22% of users tracked by Bitrix24 were in the United States, 20% in Canada, and 17% of our cultural cousins in the United Kingdom did too. Only 6% of Italians bothered checking their emails.

Why Were They Working?

The big question, of course, is why are so many folks logging in when they're supposed to be logged off?

For some people, the answer is that they had no choice. Something truly had to be done that day. For many others, though, work might be an escape from too much family togetherness. And for various reasons, some workers might not celebrate the day or have anything better to do. But the biggest reason is that it's become so darn easy to work on holidays and other supposed personal time. Given our smartphones and mobile devices, we can work almost anywhere, any time.

For me, as a writer covering the intersection of technology and society, I can’t just shut off that part of my brain just because it is a holiday. Besides, I actually like working, and given the numbers it's clear that many others feel the same way. 

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

A report published this week by Michigan State University's psychology department found evidence that using multiple forms of media at the same time is linked to symptoms of anxiety and depression. The study was conducted with data from two surveys of 319 undergraduate students, a group that engages in a lot of media multi-tasking.

One study measured symptoms of depression and anxiety, the other how the subjects engage in media multitasking, (i.e. video games, texting, apps)  to give researchers an idea of whether a subject was a high, low or medium media multi-tasker. It's important to note that the surveys measured indicators of depression and anxiety, but didn't serve as a clinical diagnosis. 

Participants with high levels of media multitasking were put into one group, those with lower levels in another. The latter group had a median score of 3.66 out 9 on a scale of depressive symptoms. The higher level group? 6.19 out of 9. The study also found that those in the higher range scored a higher median number for indicators of social phobia symptoms. 

While this is the first study of its kind to research the topic of multiple media usage and mental illness, it's not the first that has found a link between internet use and depression. In fact, earlier this year, Sriran Chellappan, assistant professor of computer science at Missouri University of Science and Technology and Raghavendra Kotikalapud, a software development engineer, penned a story for the New York Times about how depressed people use the Internet. Their method of data collection was similar to the Michigan State Study, as were their results. They found that the students with higher levels of depressive symptoms used peer-to-peer sharing (movies, music) more than those without. They also checked their email more often, which led the reseachers to believe this correlated with high levels of anxiety. 

Cause And Effect?                                                                  

There are plenty of questions  left to be answered, and plenty of room for future research. Mark Becker, lead investigator on the study, said in the report that the researchers aren't sure whether media-multitasking is causing depression and anxiety or if people already experiencing mental illness are using media as a form of distraction from their condition.

If media turns out to be the problem, Becker said that potential recommendations could include taking a "media vacation" to see if anything changes. While the direction of causality still needs to be determined, the bottom line is that multi-media consumption does seem to be linked with signs of anxiety and depression. "This could have important implications for understanding how to minimize the negative impacts of increased media multitasking," said Becker in the report. 

As for future research, in an email to ReadWrite, Becker wrote that the biggest challenge is to figure out which is the cause and which is the effect. Controlling a subject's day-to-day media multitasking habits and randomly manipulating it isn't easy, he added. "However, we hope to determine whether doing a task that requires multitasking with media produces a momentary shift in people's mood and/or anxiety. If so, it would provide some indication that media use can play a causal role."

It is a common perception around the world that Americans, by and large, have problems relaxing. We don't take what little vacations we do get and increasingly use technology to blur the line between work and home life. But a new study shows that we're not the only ones blurring that line -- emerging markets may be better practitioners of bring your own device (BYOD) than mature markets.

According to two multi-market BYOD surveys released by Ovum, the real BYOD action is in -- countries like Brazil, Russia, India and China (the so-called BRIC nations) -- where 75% of survey respondents demonstrated a much higher likelihood to use their own devices for work, compared to 44% in more mature markets. Mature markets include nations like the United States, U.K., Japan and Germany, as displayed in the graphic below.

"Employees in high-growth, emerging economies are demonstrating a more flexible attitude to working hours, and are happy to use their own devices for work. However, in mature markets, employees have settled into comfortable patterns of working behavior and are more precious about the separation of their work and personal domains," explained Richard Absalom, consumer impact IT analyst at Ovum.

Advantage: Smaller Markets

Not only does this seem to run counter to perceptions of how workers in the U.S. deal with the work/home balance, but if this trend is real, it points to a big advantage for companies in emerging economies over their richer counterparts.

"This bifurcation in behavior will shape not just future patterns of enterprise mobility in high-growth markets compared to mature markets, but also dictate which markets, structurally, are going to benefit most from this revolution in how and where we work," Absalom added.

Translation: Emerging-market companies may know better how to implement BYOD policies becuae they've had more practice. The question is, will companies in the more -developed nations pay attention to what's going on in BRIC-like countries or will they ignore these trends and essentially give the field to the smaller-market corporations?

The reason up-and-coming nations are getting behind BYOD so much? To get ahead, of course. 79% believe that constant connectivity to work applications enables them to do their jobs better, compared to 53.5% in mature markets. And this is a purely economic driver, too. Spain, which is regarded as a mature economy, is nonetheless suffering enough economic woes that 62.8% of its workers are bringing their own devices to work.

"This could have something to do with the struggling economy: People are willing to use any and all means necessary to get ahead in their jobs, as losing them could be disastrous given the high rates of unemployment," suggested Absalom.

Economic Drivers Of BYOD

That observation may help explain a broader global trend of BYOD and its rapid rise: Are the recent economic crises in the United States and Europe actually fueling the adoption of BYOD practices by workers who are insecure about their jobs that they want to be perceived as "always on" and therefore a more-valuable company asset?

This is not so far-fetched. A Harris Interactive study commissioned by JetBlue last spring revealed about 57% of working Americans had unused vacation time at the end of last year. About 9% of the same respondents indicated they were afraid to take time off in an unstable job market -- again, trying to project the perception they were of more value to their employers.

While correlation is not proven between these two trends, they do seem like parts of a broader idea that BYOD is not just a matter of being familiar with a mobile device or having the latest cool toy, but a symptom of a larger need to stay connected to work no matter what. If that's the case, perhaps the solution to a company's BYOD headaches might be to get their employees less concerned about 24/7 connectivity and encourage richer downtime experiences.